Marketing Your Orthopedic Practice: 4 Questions to Ask Yourself

Whether the marketing for your orthopedic or spine practice is done in house or by an outside agency, many practices wonder if they are getting the best results and if their efforts can be improved. Below are 4 simple questions you should ask yourself to determine whether or not your marketing strategies are generating new patients or simply just spending your money with minimal results.

1. Are You Making the Most of Your Budget?

Regardless of whether your practice marketing budget is $500 a month or $50,000 a month, the most important thing to think about is if that budget is being allocated toward the most effective marketing strategies. Has your practice adapted to the more modern patient acquisition strategies or are you using outdated methods?

2. Are You Using All Available Direct to Patient Marketing Strategies?

As mentioned above, the way patients are finding specialists has changed drastically over the last several years. The days of going to a Primary care Provider for a referral or newspaper ads are diminishing substantially as patients are now more online research driven. In fact, over 82% of patients research physicians online before making an appointment. SEO, Google Adwords, Social Media Marketing, YouTube Pre-Roll advertising, Search Retargeting and Behavior and Demographic Driven Marketing are tools your practice must utilize and maximize to stay relevant as well as stay ahead of your competition.

3. Are You Properly Tracking Your ROI?

If your practice is utilizing Direct to Patient Marketing strategies, tracking the ROI and new patient volume is imperative. This is more than just tracking clicks and impressions and is about drilling down to the exact source from which a new patient was generated. One mistake practices often make is relying on the patient to tell you how they found you. Invariably, if you ask a patient they will say, “I found you online”. But what does that mean? Did they click on a Google Ad? Was it an organic search click? Did they see a Facebook ad and go to your site? Knowing exactly how patients found you, without having to ask the patient, will allow your practice to make better decisions as to where your budget is best spent and which initiatives are yielding results and which are not.

4. Are You Happy With Your Current Results

This is by far the most important of all the questions. Is your marketing something you are confident in and are you happy with the results? In most cases, this has everything to do with the capabilities of your marketing team/agency and if they truly know how to attract new patients for your practice. Too often marketers use the same strategies that they would use for a product or local restaurant to market an orthopedic or spine practice. Big mistake. Being able to market your practice correctly takes an understanding of the healthcare system, terminology, specialties and patient behaviors and habits.

We specialize in Spine, Orthopedic, Neurosurgery and Multi-Specialty Practices marketing. Our clients across the country have seen their practices grow using our unique and time tested strategies. Unlike other companies, we are exclusively in the medical field and do not make the mistake of marketing your practice like a retail product.

Gold Medical Marketing also offersNO COST MARKETING EVALUATIONS, wherein we will objectively evaluate your current marketing efforts. The goal of this is to highlight areas in need of improvement as well as areas where money is being spent on low ROI initiatives.Contact ustoday to set up an evaluation.